Four AM… yeowzehs…

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I’m no friend of college myself, that’s for sure, and I think you explained some of the major problems with it perfectly! It sounds like God has definitely told you that that isn’t where He wants you.

“We can serve God anywhere, yes, and should and will–but with numbers like that, it always feels like it isn’t enough. That just to stay here and live out our lives in comfort is just too easy.” I was thinking about that, too. I don’t think that living here has to equal comfort and easy living. That’s our choice, wherever we are. But for me personally, and probably for a lot of people, it would be SO infinitely much easier to part with everything when daily faced with the reality that there are people with literally nothing. That atmosphere inspires one to give and give and give. Whereas here it is SO easy to fall into temptation and grow luke warm and just be lazy and live fat.

I guess I am torn between two concepts– whether we should live in America brightly shining God’s light, or whether we should shake the dust from our sandals and go to a less stiff-necked people.

I just thought of something. The con of living here is that instead of Christians shining brightly, our light tends to dull and fade, always being snuffed out by wordly influences bombarding us at every turn. God wanted Israel to be pure, to get rid of ALL of the Canaanites from their land, which they didn’t do, and not to intermarry.

Perhaps our salt is losing its saltiness.

And yet, there really are so many people here with great need, so many people God is changing and redeeming, but just have to know where to look. I suppose it’s all a matter of where He wants you.

For a long time, I struggled with the idea of foreign missions–it seems when people get on that tack, they forget about the people right here, next-door, under our noses. It seemed unfair and negligent to me. But over the past few months, I’ve been realizing that we live amongst a stiff-necked, hard-hearted people. This is a nation of people about whom the Lord has said, “Their eyes do not see, their ears will not hear.” So I guess the key it to be ready and willing to Go, but to keep our eyes open and not to miss a single opportunity to love while we are staying here on familiar territory.

I was getting more and more disgusted with academia. Think of the millions of dollars–maybe even billions, who knows–spent every year on college tuition by people who want to secure their future success and stability. For my part, it seemed like an utter waste to be spending even just $10,000 a year on the cheapest 4-year university I could find in the state for the quality of education I was receiving (or rather, NOT receiving.)

If you go to school to get necessary training for a job where your primary motive is to serve and love rather than attain that three-car garage in the suburbs or the glamorous loft apartment, then okay: that’s good. But I feel confident in saying that 99% of the people going to college are there for the wrong reasons, or getting shoddy training–and usually both. The education system as I experienced it is broken. Self-advancement is the single goal. An ineffective, unchallenging “education” (i.e. jumping through a few hoops to get a piece of paper with some credentials on it: that’s all our college system does as far as I can see) costs a ludicrous amount of money that could be so much better spent.

Liberal “tolerance” and special interests take the day. The professors (in English, anyway) sit on their pinnacles of worldly wisdom peering down at the world through dusty spectacles and pointlessly chattering about whether Emily Dickinson was a repressed lesbian or not and how this contributed to her genius. To fulfill a science requirement, I decided to take chemistry because I’ve always hated biology and have a low tolerance for the condescending tone that creeps into teachers’ voices when they talk about creationism. Chemistry seemed safe, right? I’ll take stoichiometry over Darwinism any day. Well, the whole term, my professor (a witty young fellow who would have been nice otherwise,) taught his chemistry very ineffectively and used the rest of his class-time to lament his upbringing in Pennsylvania among the “Bible-beating, gun-clinging Christians.” In his mind, the metropolitan centers of New England, and the West Coast (think California) are apexes of enlightenment. And the rest of the country is composed of ignorant, red-necked Believers. He espoused this belief with great vehemence, and dripped pity and disgust for the rest of the unenlightened world.

The education system is dominated by liberals. I think that where there are conservative Christians in academia, they keep silent and equivocate, because to be a Christian is to be close-minded, and to believe in the Bible is to by ignorant and behind-the-times. And academia, of course, prizes open-mindedness, up-to-the-minute information, and a limp-wristed wishy-washy tolerance that they propound will bring about peace.

Yes, this denotes a great need. . .but. . .it seems almost like it would be better to start from the bottom up. I don’t think college professors change lives or thinking all that much. By the time you’re in college, I think you’ve generally adopted your prejudices. I’ve thought of going back to school maybe to be an elementary or middle school teacher–THOSE teachers can have SUCH an impact. Even high school teachers can. But the education system is so “of the world,” that one almost hates to have anything to do with it.

Anyway, I haven’t altogether crossed out going back to college. I fear the possibility, because college as I experienced it was soul-killing and fruitless. . .but I’m trying so hard to seek the Lord. If He tells me to go back to school, I will, and I know He’ll go with me—but at the same time, I’d really need Him to tell me in no uncertain terms that that’s what He wanted. I don’t think you need a degree to change the world. Since I left college, I’ve been learning so much more than I learned while there, and I’ve been doing so much more, just by loving–truly loving, or at least learning to love–the people in my life, from my family, to the next-door neighbor, to the people who come into Penguins for coffee and who will just blossom if you give them a radiant, sincere smile and care about them.

Anyway, all that to say that I’m sure I was right, and even led, when I dropped out of college, but I definitely agree with you that, “you can live a life of sacrifice, seeking ways to bless every person you come into contact with, be it the clerk at the grocery store, each of your customers at the ice cream shop, your housemates, the woman you see walking her dog at the park, or the lady you sit next to on a plane. Sometimes, we miss what is right under our noses.”

However, I started to ponder something when you said “Does it help a single soul to write thirty-page papers on dichotomies in Shakespeare?? I dropped out because it wasn’t right. It was too self-serving and useless”. Now this is just coming off the top of my head, completely un-thought through, but perhaps it isn’t always useless to do that. What if you did become a college professor? You could do it to the best of your ability to God’s glory. And if you made a pretty penny from it, you could use that to bless people in need, support missionaries, donate to sick people who can’t afford their medical bills. I think we should all be involved in caring for the hurting, suffering people in the world, in blessing the poor, in saving the lost. But Rissa, who is to say that as an English Professor you couldn’t be a “missionary” too? What if God used you in that position, and brought people into your life who you could minister and witness to? Being a missionary doesn’t necessarily mean being a foreign missionary.

And suppose this. Suppose that every Christian decided it was more noble to become a missionary than anything else, and we all did that? Who does that leave us as professors teaching others? Scary thought. The world needs Christians who are involved in every aspect of it, shining their light where God plants them. I think the vast majority of us fail miserably at shining our lights brightly and unashamedly and with faith that God is doing something. But what if you did? What if you were the most beautiful, humble, joyful English Professor there was? What if you were a conduit for helping others see Jesus on every page of life, including Shakespeare? If there is anything good in Shakespeare, it comes from God. Shakesoeare’s complex brain and amazing style are a testimony to the fact that we have a Creator who made us in His imagine and gave us incredible gifts and abilities.

God has given you a gift, Marissa. Take everything I’ve said with a grain of salt, as I know you shall, but still, don’t put God in a box with what He might be calling you to do. “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands” 1 Thessalonians 4:11. What a novel concept–a quiet life!

A couple weeks ago, we had an afternoon shower, and I had just finished a book I had really enjoyed and been blessed by, and I went outside and stood in the rain and opened my hands to catch it. And I had this overwhelming sense, everything honing into one point, that HE was the adventure. God is a glorious adventure! An exquisite romance! We’ll spend forever exploring the wonderfulness of our amazing God. All the adventures we think we want to go on, they’re all on a quest for that richly satisifying something. Which is Him! He is it! He is the adventure!

Maybe I’m tangenting here. But for a tangent, it’s so… conclusive. To me it was.

But anywho, my whole point with this rambling epistle of a comment is that you can live a life of sacrifice, seeking ways to bless every person you come into contact with, be it the clerk at the grocery store, each of your customers at the ice cream shop, your housemates, the woman you see walking her dog at the park, or the lady you sit next to on a plane. Sometimes, we miss what is right under our noses.

And maybe in the end it isn’t what we do at all, but who we love. Not to say that in the midst of loving Him He isn’t going to call us to serve others! “If you love me, feed my lambs”. But is that where our eyes should be? In the end, there will be no starving children to feed and lost souls to rescue. Just an amazing God to delight in for all eternity.

Been there, done that, wrote the book… or failed to write the book, actually.

I’ve been asking God for so long what He wants me to do, but there must be something I’m missing, or something wrong about the way I’m asking. Or used to be. Now, after three years and counting, I feel like I’m just beginning to make out that path the grass was hiding. It is still so faint I’m afraid to blink for fear I’ll lose it again, but I have to trust it is there and that He’ll help me find it.

Perhaps this verse is for you– “Be strong, take heart, and wait on the Lord”

Another thought– sometimes it feels like we’re not going anywhere in life, but God has a purpose for it. There are seasons of waiting, and God teaches us a lot through it. When Sarah and I were running our own daycare, we often felt like it was a supreme waste of time, and we didn’t make enough money for it to be worth it, if that’s the only reason we were doing it. God used it to help us to grow up a lot. We learned a lot about the real world, and interacted with people outside of our sheltered homeschooled world. We saw broken families, unmarried couples, fatherless kids, families struggling financially. They weren’t just statistics anymore, they were real people, and we began seeing them as God sees them– with compassion. It was eye-opening. The world would look at what we did in those almost two years and say it was a complete failure and waste of time. But we know that we acquired skills, maturity, and life experience that will be valuable to us in the future. And I know that my prayers for all those kids I cared for were heard, and made a difference. And providing a loving, safe, Christian environment for the children that were brought to us I’m sure made an impact, even if we can’t see the results this side of heaven. Well, just some thoughts. Hope it was encouraging. It’s hard to truly believe it sometimes, but God has a plan. Pray, pray, pray!